That being said, the problem is that even if another vendor could produce hardware that’s on par with Apple, but at a reasonable price, they would still lack the OS. Windows is still doing 1 hour updates on reboot, and is filled with telemetry spyware... Linux still requires a lot of hacking, often has audio and trackpad issues, etc.
Right now macOS is the only sensible operating system for creative pros. Period.
Sorry, somebody must call out these myths. A less than 20 year old Linux desktop is the most plug and play operating system there is. Stick with supported hardware and there aren't even any third party drivers to mess about it. It doesn't get any easier than that. And hardware support is a lot broader than with MacOS.
The reason more Macs are used with the creative industry is mostly cultural. The operating system isn't really a choice for a professional, you choose your tools and use whatever is required to run them. There are some exceptions with products such as Lightworks, but I get the impression that these are sold mostly as appliances.
It's different for us who do IT for IT's sake. It's more of a personal choice which desktops we want to run. It's absolutely possible to deploy on Linux and develop on a Mac as long as you don't touch anything close to the machine. You probably need to install things like Brew and keep things updated and reasonably secure, but it's not only possible but something many people find worthwhile.
I think you're probably coming from a "I have a billion years of experience with linux, so it's all easy" point of view.
Linux first install CAN be smooth sailing till the first roadblock. Then you see a few things happen:
- User gives up because a decent chunk of people don't even know to google the error message
- Error message gets googled, you now receive 2-3 different solutions
- Solutions require diving into the terminal, changing and tweaking annoying settings. Terminal use alone makes things a PITA for your average user.
Perhaps, but having a corresponding billion years of experience with some other operating system doesn't make the comparison more fair.
Buy a cheap out of the box laptop with poor hardware and you are going to have to google error messages no matter what operating system you put on it. I've had enough of Windows laptops with flaky wifi or that doesn't resume from suspend properly, for example. Mac users like their boxes primarily, and rightly, because of the premium hardware.
The fact remains, that if you have a non-techie friend or relative that wants a computer that just works for surfing the web and writing documents, get them a decent Linux box. That might mean ChromeOS these days, or it might mean Fedora on a Thinkpad. As long as they don't stray into tweaking those weird settings, they're set for life (figurately speaking, of course).
Those of us who develops software, and especially for "the cloud" (i.e. Linux), we have our own choices to make. Just give up that old Linux-requires-tinkering narrative. That hasn't been true since the early 00s, when editing xorg.conf and manually setting IRQ lines was a thing (which was true of PC hardware mostly before the PCI Express era).
That being said, the problem is that even if another vendor could produce hardware that’s on par with Apple, but at a reasonable price, they would still lack the OS. Windows is still doing 1 hour updates on reboot, and is filled with telemetry spyware... Linux still requires a lot of hacking, often has audio and trackpad issues, etc.
Right now macOS is the only sensible operating system for creative pros. Period.